Malware Hijacking YouTube Users

http://www.youtube.comAs reported by Mashable and PCWorld YouTube is being used as a vehicle to infect users with Zlob malware. The malware is in a form of a fake video link which initiates the install of a trojan, which then bombards users with porn adware.

It’s times like these where you really hope that the YouTube security personnel are on the ball, as they are the only ones who can do anything regarding this matter. Because of the human intervention that is required to remove these types of attacks, it is being reported that the malware will have at least a few hours to spread before the infectious links are taken down.

There are no numbers as of yet that describe the amount of people that have been infected thus far, but considering the malicious code is a link and the infected video could perhaps be embedded on a number of websites, we are looking at a potentially dangerous situation. It will be interesting to find out later in the day today, the number of users who have reported being infected.

If I were you, I would stay away from YouTube until we are given the all clear.

WordPress Releases 2.2.1

WordPress 2.2.1 is now available. 2.2.1 is a bug fix release for the 2.2 series. Since 2.2 was released a month ago, the WordPress community has been improving fit-and-finish by identifying and fixing those little bugs that can be so annoying and by fine-tuning some small details. The result is a nicely polished 2.2.1 release. The full list of bugs fixed in 2.2.1 is available here. Here are some highlights.

Unfortunately, 2.2.1 is not just a bug fix release. Some security issues came to light during 2.2.1 development, making 2.2.1 a required upgrade. 2.2.1 addresses the following vulnerabilities:

Jeffro2pt0.com has successfully been upgraded to version 2.2.1

Jaiku Launches Channels Feature

Jaiku LogoAs reported by Mashable Jaiku has finally added the ability for users to create their own channels. Users are limited to creating only three channels, with each channel being publicly viewable upon creation.

 

Channel administrators will be able to give their channel a unique avatar, short description, add feeds to the channel, and will also be able to slightly change the presentation of the channel. In the future, Jaiku users will be able to create private channels, allowing you to communicate with only those people you have invited into your group.

I’m still bummed out by the fact that Jaiku has failed to fix the problem of too many users being displayed on the right hand sidebar when your inside a channel. For instance, try going into the Twit channel and making a quick post, it becomes anything but quick. The sidebar should be handles in a way so that only a maximum of 20-30 people are displayed at one time with the option of seeing more friends. Hopefully this will be in Jaiku’s next update.

Jeffro2pt0 Channel Now On Jaiku

At any rate, I have created a channel on Jaiku called Jeffro2pt0 which will be the focus of discussions related to anything dealing with Web 2.0 If you are a Jaiku user and are interested in Web2.0 please be sure to stop by and join the channel http://jaiku.com/channel/Jeffro2pt0

Thoof: Another Digg Clone?

Appscout has put together a detailed preview of a new user-generated content service which promises to provide relevant, useful information but without the users. Thoof uses an algorithm that will discover a reader’s interests while tailoring the stories to an individual’s tastes. Commenting on Thoof will be non existent as well as the ability to rank stories. The only means of interacting amongst each other is the “SEND TO A FRIEND BUTTON” which will email a selected news story to a friends inbox of your choice.

The thing that makes Thoof stand out from the crowd is that it allows its members to submit news and headlines, and rather than rank those stories, the stories are immediately posted to users’ homepages. There’s no ranking, no commenting, and no burying of stories. Stories are automatically rated by the system to only be displayed on the homepages of Thoof users who have previously clicked on or indicated interest in other stories of the same type or topic. In fact, the only items that a user can click on when viewing a story are the “send to a friend” button to email the story to someone else, or the “improve” button that allows users to correct story blurbs for accuracy, or immediately report and flag duplicates. When I tried the “improve” button, it returned a 503 error, reinforcing the fact that Thoof is still very much a beta. Some features aren’t completely implemented, and others may yet come. – Source Appscout

Thoof is still invite-only, and there is no time table as to when Thoof will become publicly available. Click here to check out Appscout’s preview of Thoof

My Website Failed

Website Grader

Thanks to the InstaBloke for this service. It’s called Website Grader. Website Grader uses an algorithm to calculate a final score for a particular domain to determine not only it’s SEO optimization but how marketable the website is.

Because the domain jeffro2pt0.com is less than one month old and I have yet to perform the SEO work that will be involved in getting my domain listed higher in the search engines, I have failed the test by receiving 35% or 35/100 for my overall score. This is understandable considering the situation, and I hope that by the end of this month, I can improve this score from 35% to at least 45% which of course is going to require a good bit of work.

To check out why my score is so low click on the following link Report For Jeffro2pt0.com I encourage you to perform a Website Grader check on your own domain and post your score within the comments area. If your feeling good about your score, post a link to your report.

*UPDATE* After performing a few techniques today, I managed to increase my score from 35% to 54% which accomplishes my goal for the month of June. That was fast!

Who Needs Privacy?

As illustrated by Nick Douglas writer for Valleywag and a recent article on Mashable.com written by James Mowery titled Stalking 2.0 have users switched from wanting to remain anonymous to practically being stalked and not giving a hoot about privacy anymore? As most of us know, anonymity on the Internet is a tough thing to come by. Some say it doesn’t even exist. Why is it then, that so many people are using Web 2.0 services that practically broadcast everything they do with their computer system to the web?

It is unnerving to see so many users literally broadcasting much of their personal information to the web. I feel that if this trend of broadcasting ones life to the Internet continues, there will be a sharp increase in the amount of cases that deal with identity theft. Each one of these broadcasting services is a piece of a puzzle, collect enough pieces and you can put together a comprehensive profile on a specific person. One thing is for sure, browsing the web and going through a user’s online presence to compile personal information is a whole lot easier than hacking into a user’s system.

The next time I hear someone complain about Google and how much information they store on their users to accommodate targeted advertising, I am going to remind them that there are folks like Nick Douglas who can likely find the information they need about a particular person within 60 minutes of browsing each social networking site that a user may be apart of. Not every guy is as nice as Nick, and I whole heartedly believe that the social engineering types are gleaming with joy as the information they needed to work so hard to obtain is now given to them on a silver platter.

Who else is concerned about what is going on? Do I and others have nothing to worry about?

YouTube Remixer Launched/Reviewed

YouTube LogoAs reported by TechCrunch, YouTube has officially launched YouTube Remixer today, which is a new service that allows users to edit their videos from within YouTube itself. Join me as I take a look at this new service to see what it has to offer.

Powered by Adobe Premiere Express, the new service supports the insertion of graphics, text and audio as well as overlays and in-video transitions. While testing the new service my FireFox browser crashed which proves that this is not the ideal solution to use if you want to create a quality video which may take up quite a bit of your time, only to potentially have it wasted. Remixer should be popular to those who can not afford the Adobe Premiere Express desktop software, however, because you can only use your own media, users will be unable to create entertaining mashups which would have been a big hit.

 

The Beginning:

Remixer can be used by anyone who has registered a YouTube account. To begin using Remixer, click the following link http://www.youtube.com/ytremixer The first thing you should notice is that the familiar white background color of YouTube is gone. The bright color scheme that YouTube users have come to expect has been exchanged for a depressing grey color scheme. I can’t help but feel depressed while looking at the interface. At any rate, all of the videos that you have uploaded to your YouTube account will appear on the right by default. This area also houses the Graphics And Captions, Borders, Transition and Music features that can be added to the videos.

 

How To Use Remixer:

To begin using Remixer, drag one of your videos from the list on the right into the first box that appears in the time line. This will be the starting point of your video. It may take some time before the video loads into the time line but once it does, move the triangle located above the top of the red bar Playlist Time Line Indicator to the right to a point in the video where you would like a transition effect to occur. Once you drag the triangle to the appropriate spot, click on the SCISSORS icon to the left of the red bar. The Scissors icon will slice the video into two separate clips allowing you to place a transition in between them.

The transition effect, applied to the video

After the video is sliced into two separate sections, click on Transitions And Effects link. There are five different transitions to choose from, they are, Fade to Black, Fade to White, Fade Out, Circle Wipe, and Blur. Each one of these effects are self explanatory. To use one of the effects, drag the name of the effect into the smaller gray square that sits in between the two video clips. Preview the video with the included effects by clicking on the preview link in the bottom left corner of the Remixer Window. If you don’t like the result, you can either click on the UNDO button, or you can drag the effect from the time line back into the window on the right side of the page.

You can also add borders to your video, although I have yet to figure out how to place a border on one video clip rather than have it appear on every clip. The border feature allows you to add that extra spice to your piece. There are seventeen different borders to choose from including a television border, vintage photo border, and a plasma border which tries to provide the effect that your watching the video on a plasma television. If you manage to figure out how to place different borders on different video clips, let me know in the comments section.

Remixer also provides a way for you to provide different graphics and captions over your videos. The graphics are Vector based which means you can scale them to the size that you need and they will retain their quality. Some of the graphics include a baby bottle, sunglasses and the ever so cute ginger bread man. There are also three different types of captions that you can add to your video clips, stylish, plain and thought bubbles.

As for the ability to add music and photos to your videos, I have yet to figure that out. As far as I know, YouTube is used for videos, not for photos or for music. I tried dragging images from a separate browser window into the Remixer time line and that did not work. If you know how to add music and photos to your movies, please let me know so I can update this post.

Once you are finished remixing your video, click on the publish button. You will be asked to give the video a Title, Description and provide a list of tags for the video. Because of the launch of Remixer, YouTube has now added a new link in your My Videos area called My Remixed Videos. This is where all of the videos you Remix will be located once you publish them.

 

Conclusion:

The first remix video I published failed to save the transition effects that I applied. The second video did the same thing, so I am unable to provide a demo video showing the different transition effects that are available. I am not sure if this is a bug or not but I would think that the videos you publish from Remixer are suppose to contain the transitions you applied. The video looked exactly the way it was suppose to as I previewed it in the Remixer service, however, what I viewed is not how the actual video was published.

Remixer is no Adobe Desktop Solution, but it does provide a way for average YouTube users to compile their existing videos into something a bit more interesting. A major drawback for Remixer is the non ability to save a piece of work. This means that if your browser crashes during your Remixing session, you will have to start over from scratch and I doubt that very many users will actually start from scratch. As I noted earlier, this would have been truly Remixing if YouTube users had the ability to Remix any videos that are stored in the Remixer repository but I suppose this is asking too much. The service is actually pretty easy to use and I encourage you to look over your videos and see if you can’t improve their presentation using Remixer.

Web 2.0 And Open Source

Rosler has published the first in what will be a series of articles detailing what Web 2.0 and Open Source has done for small businesses. Rosler makes quite a few interesting points in his first article such as the cost savings involved with open source and the collaborative effort that comes naturally from Web 2.0 based applications. We are living in an era where the technology is at a point where a small group of people using open source software and web 2.0 based applications can rival that of a corporation who most likely spends thousands if not millions of dollars on proprietary software.

Open source and web 2.0 are quite honestly the best things that could ever happen for small businesses.

Check out Roslers article here

What Is The Purpose Of This Site?

Web 2.0 is the biggest thing on the web right now. Sites and services are being created and launched every day of the week. Many people still don’t have a clue as to what Web 2.0 actually is not to mention what the purpose is behind most of the Web 2.0 sites and services that exist on the web today. Quite often, the ABOUT PAGE is simply not enough. That is why I have decided to become the guinea pig of Web 2.0.

I will throw myself into each and every Web 2.0 service that I can find and provide a detailed review of what the service is, what the site or service does, and the benefits and drawbacks to using the particular site or service. Many people simply don’t have the time to invest in all of these different sites and services which is where jeffro2pt0.com steps in.

Asides from doing in-depth reviews, jeffro2pt0.com will also be covering Web 2.0 in general including news, applications that tie into web services, web 2.0 education and much more.

My goal, is to provide the ins and outs of every web 2.0 site/service I can register an account with so you don’t have to.